Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Pope Benedict XVI transferred a
senior Holy See official after his name appeared in Italian
media reports about a secret Vatican dossier on the leaking of
papal documents.

Monsignor Ettore Balestrero, who as an undersecretary of
the Vatican’s Foreign Ministry had played a key role in efforts
to improve Vatican financial transparency, was named ambassador
to Colombia, the Holy See press office said today.

Balestrero had been mentioned in the reports by Panorama
magazine and la Repubblica daily, which said the pope decided to
resign in December after receiving a dossier allegedly detailing
a network of sex and corruption inside the Vatican. The reports
cited unidentifed people close to the three cardinals who
compiled the document, which was the result of an internal probe
into last year’s leaks case that led to the arrest and later
pardon of the pope’s personal butler.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi, who’s indicated the
pope may meet with the cardinals who compiled the document
before leaving office Feb. 28, has declined to comment on the
Italian media reports.

Balestrero’s transfer was in the works a long time and had
nothing to do with the media reports or leaks investigation,
Lombardi told reporters after a briefing at the Vatican today.

Vatileaks Case

The scandal known as Vatileaks centered on papal documents
that were leaked to an Italian journalist by Paolo Gabriele, the
pope’s former butler. The pope on Dec. 22 pardoned Gabriele
after he had been convicted of theft by a Vatican tribunal and
sentenced to 18 months in a Vatican jail.

The leaked texts formed the backbone of a book portraying
the Vatican as a hotbed of intrigue and Benedict as a leader
undermined by his powerful second-in-command, Cardinal Tarcisio
Bertone, once touted as a possible candidate for the papacy.

The pope announced on Feb. 11 that he no longer had the
strength to lead the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics and will
resign from the papacy at the end of the month, the first such
abdication in almost 600 years.

Catholic Clergy

In one of this last public appearances before retiring, the
pope said Feb. 13 that “God is not an instrument to be used for
one’s own ends, for one’s own glory.” Catholic clergy must
avoid divisions and set a good example for both the faithful and
non-believers, he said.

“The face of the church is sometimes disfigured, I think
in particular of the blows against its unity and divisions
within the clergy,” he said during Ash Wednesday celebrations
Feb. 13 in St. Peter’s Basilica. “Overcoming individualism and
rivalries is a humble and precious signal to those who are far
from the faith.”